


Navegesimus

by zoicite



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Harrow Nova - Freeform, Harrow the Ninth Spoilers, Kissing, Reverend Daughter Gideon, lyctorhood, marriage proposals, one end, one flesh, perfect lyctorhood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:27:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26091115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoicite/pseuds/zoicite
Summary: It was a ridiculous name, sounded terrible on the tongue, like an affliction, a disease. On the other hand, it could be worse.  At least they didn’t give her Harrow’s exact name.  They gave her everything else: Harrow’s room and Harrow’s things, Harrow’s robes that hadn’t evenfitGideon, that had to be layered over different longer robes.  At least they left the name behind, one small reminder that Harrow was once theirs.Note:Contains spoilers forHarrow the Ninth
Relationships: Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 50
Kudos: 286





	1. Chapter 1

Harrow Nova simmered across from her necromancer, rapier set across her lap and chain at her side, her short veil pulled down to cover her eyes. The shuttle was still. The trip had been fast, an hour at most, but they’d been hovering now for thirty minutes just waiting to be cleared. Harrow watched Gideon through the layer of black lace, watched the necromancer’s knee bounce with anxious anticipation. When Gideon caught her watching, Gideon smiled at Harrow and Harrow sneered. Gideon was _enjoying_ this. She seemed _excited_. Harrow had no doubt that Gideon was going to disgrace the Ninth the second she stepped off this shuttle onto the First, this Reverend Daughter with a smile on her face, with bright yellow light in her eyes. She was going to disgrace them all and then what would Harrow’s parents think?

Nothing. 

That was the worst part. They wouldn’t think a thing about it! The Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House, the first in a new line. _Navegesimus._ Harrow swallowed, tried not to gag at the mere thought of the name. Gideon had arrived on the Ninth a baby, mysterious as fuck from the start, and in less than a year she’d doubled the intrigue that surrounded her. She survived the disaster of Harrow’s conception before she could crawl. She terrified Harrow’s parents, terrified the Ninth. That should have been the end of it right there, an outcast for life. That was the thing though. While young Harrow floundered in her studies, this mysterious carrot child began to show _aptitude_. She rose the ranks as Gideon Nav and when Harrow was four and Gideon was five, Gideon took Harrow’s place as the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House. She became Gideon Navegesimus and Gideon Navegesimus she remained. They stripped Harrow of her name and her title and left her crying in the grit, Nonagesimus no more, Nova from then on.

Navegesimus. 

It was a ridiculous name, sounded terrible on the tongue, like an affliction, a disease. Nav she was and Nav she would remain as far as Harrow was concerned. On the other hand, it could be worse. At least they didn’t give her Harrow’s exact name. They gave her everything else, Harrow’s room and Harrow’s things, Harrow’s robes that hadn’t even _fit_ the larger girl, that had to be layered over different longer robes. At least they left the name behind, one small reminder that Harrow was once theirs.

Gideon pulled sunglasses from the pocket of her robe and held them up to show Harrow, like they were some prize she’d won. 

She was definitely going to disgrace them all. 

Gideon opened the closest window’s shutters and Harrow swore at the sudden influx of blinding light. Gideon apologized, but she did it absently, like Harrow no longer existed, wasn’t there at all. It was a long time before Gideon spoke again.

“Look at it, Harrow,” Gideon said, the awe plain in her voice. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“Maybe you have and you just don’t remember,” Harrow said. “Maybe you saw something just like it when you were strapped to your mum in space, before you fell on our doorstep and ruined my life.”

Gideon ignored Harrow, stared out the window. Harrow’s eyes were watering, the light fucking hurt, and she reached up under her veil to wipe the corners before they streaked down through her paint.

She’d fought hard to be here on this shuttle beside the Reverend Daughter. She’d fought tooth and nail to be recognized as cavalier primary, but looking at Gideon Nav now, with her witless smile and her stupid red eyebrows obscured by wire frames and dark glass, Harrow wondered why she ever thought she needed this. 

When Ortus disappeared off the Ninth, supposedly stowed away on a pilgrim’s shuttle, or so the story went, Harrow had rejoiced! She didn’t think about the fact that Ortus was terrified of leaving the Ninth, that he would never have willingly chosen to go. She didn’t look hard at the self-satisfied smile on Marshal Crux’s face when he delivered her the news. There was no time. The Reverend Daughter would answer the First, and to answer the First she needed a cavalier. 

Enter Harrow Nova, the best cavalier the Ninth had ever seen, Matthias Nonius come again. Once Ortus got word of her legendary deeds from whichever inferior House he found himself camped in, he’d write ninety volumes in her name. _The Noviad_. She’d read it aloud to Gideon until Gideon broke down in sobs, begged her to stop, pleaded. And Harrow wouldn’t stop. She’d read it to the end, without break, without pause. _I am the unfulfilled vow and the bloody teeth of the unkissed skull_ , she’d read, and oh, how Gideon would _weep_. 

Gideon’s eyes looked very bright and very beautiful when she cried and Harrow hadn’t seen them like that in a very long time.

She watched Gideon stare out the window, saw her reach up, just as Harrow had done, to wipe the wet from the corner of an eye. She did not want to think about how those eyes looked just then. She did not want to find anything about Gideon Nav beautiful.

“How much longer?” Harrow demanded. She stood and slapped her hand against the communication button. “It’s unacceptable to keep the Ninth waiting so long.” Gideon shushed her. “When will we be cleared to land?”

“They’re almost finished scanning your craft now, Your Grace,” said the remote navigator, stationed somewhere on the Second or perhaps on the Fifth. “We’ll move the moment they confirm you’re free to leave orbit.”

 _Your Grace_. Harrow smacked her hand against the wall and then moved back to her sit opposite Gideon. 

Gideon’s feet were placed firmly within a little pile of dirt carted into the shuttle from the Ninth. Harrow stared at it hard, sure that if she looked long enough she’d see worms eating away at the necromancer’s feet.

“Listen,” Gideon said, suddenly. Harrow started, looked up to find Gideon watching her from behind her dark lenses. “I know you’re pissed, but the marriage proposal made sense. Your parents agreed.”

“Fuck,” Harrow breathed. “Please don’t do this now.”

“I was trying to help you.”

“I don’t need your shitty help, Nav. I have never needed your help, not once in my entire life.”

Gideon continued as though Harrow had not spoken: “It’s not like I like you. I mean, I wouldn’t mind, but really I just thought you’d be happy at the chance to contribute to--”

“Well, I’m not,” Harrow cut in. “And if you don’t stop, I’m going to kill us both before we land. You’re a sitting duck up here, can’t raise a single skeleton, can you?”

Gideon looked down at the pile of dirt. “I should be able to raise one, maybe two.”

“Go ahead. Try it.” It was a very small patch of dirt. This should wear Gideon out entirely, leave her stumbling out of the shuttle as soon as they landed.

“Harrow,” Gideon groaned. 

“Fight me, Griddle,” Harrow pushed. She stood, rapier in hand. 

“Look, if we’d received the letter earlier, if I’d _known_ , I never would have petitioned--”

“Nav--shut up and fight!”

Gideon threw up her hands. Harrow did not understand how Gideon was not horrified by the entire conversation. She couldn’t understand how the thought didn’t make Gideon’s stomach twist in the upsetting tingling way that Harrow’s was twisting and tingling now. She didn’t understand how Gideon’s heart wasn’t in her throat like Harrow’s heart was currently in hers, like if Harrow wasn’t careful it might be expelled through her mouth and splat out on the floor. It didn’t sound like a pleasant way to die. Couldn’t Gideon see that she was _murdering_ Harrow, that Harrow’s stomach was in knots and she was _this_ close to barfing up her internal organs?

No, Gideon was wearing entirely inappropriate sunglasses and couldn’t see shit. She tossed a chunk of bone into the pile of Ninth dirt and raised it into a sizable construct. It was just the one skeleton, but jumbo, bones thick and head brushing the ceiling of the shuttle. 

“Hurry up,” Gideon said. She was still buckled into her seat, hadn’t even bothered to stand. “We don’t have much time.”

Something about the way that Gideon said that made what they were doing sound lewd, lascivious, something to be kept behind closed doors and hidden away. That was all Harrow needed, the final straw to tip her from heart-barfing nausea and fuming anger to heart-barfing explosive rage. She rushed forward with a shout, sword ready, grip tight and chain in hand. 

The construct barely fought back, clumsy in the confined space of the shuttle. A few thrusts, one swing of her chain, and the construct exploded into bits of bone that pelted Gideon’s chest and shoulders. She flinched, held a hand up to shield her glasses, curled up a little in her seat.. At least there was that.

“That’s really all you’ve got?” Harrow asked, suspicious. When the bone turned to dust and Gideon unfolded to her full long length, Harrow saw that the Reverend Daughter had not even broken a sweat. They were sitting on a shuttle in space amidst the remains of a big-boned hulk of a construct and there was not a single smudge of blood on Gideon’s face. She didn’t even look tired! 

Gideon shrugged and brushed bone dust from her robe. “What did you expect? This shuttle is tiny.” She didn’t even seem annoyed that she’d just been pelted by her own construct, that her sacramental vestments were smeared gray and blotchy.

The shuttle started moving again, sinking down toward the First. Gideon forgot Harrow, her attention turned back to the window as the shuttle shook and the engines screamed. 

Harrow watched Gideon through narrow eyes, her chest still burning, not yet ready to let this go. “Necromancers don’t _marry_ their cavaliers.” 

Gideon shrugged again. “Okay. Maybe necromancers don’t marry their cavaliers when they’re from Houses that have options. The Ninth doesn’t have options.” 

Oh, but they did. They had _options_ when they sacrificed an entire generation for one baby. They had _options_ when they chose to cast that baby aside in favor of some freaky freckled necromancer that dropped out of the sky. 

“Also, you weren’t my cavalier when I asked.”

Harrow collapsed back into her seat. “Good. Now that Ortus is free of his duties, pull him back from wherever he went and ask him instead. You see? Options.”

Harrow expected disgusted outrage in response to this. She did not receive it. Instead, Gideon said: “I’ll have plenty of options now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I said,” Gideon countered. “We’re about to get off this shuttle and meet seven other necromancers and seven other cavaliers. Who knows! Maybe I’ll hit it off with one of them.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Why not?” Gideon asked. 

“You’re here to become a Lyctor, the Emperor’s fist and gestures, his Hand.”

“Hands can’t get married? Saints can’t be wed? You’ll have to cite your sources on that, Harrow. We’re all the best our Houses have to offer. It’s a perfect opportunity to mingle and we both know there are others looking to diversify their bloodlines. The Sixth, for one, based on Pal’s letters. You know I’ve been looking forward to meeting Camilla for years.”

Ugh, the Sixth. The Sixth had been bombarding them with letters since Harrow was five years old, Gideon six. Leave it to Gideon Nav to actually respond. Gideon started writing back in secret and when Harrow found out, she stole the correspondence and took the stack of letters straight to her parents, the petty backlash of an outcast child. She accused the Reverend Daughter of revealing the Ninth’s secrets and selling them out to the Sixth. She felt hot, burning with excitement, at the thought of the punishment they would inflict.

Her parents did not react as expected. 

They read through the letters, looked them over carefully while Gideon stood beside Harrow, her face a mask beneath her paint, with only the quickest of glances in Harrow’s direction. Sometimes her parents smiled, once Harrow’s mother _laughed_. Out loud. Her parents read through the letters and they decided that, in fact, they were very _pleased_ that Gideon was making friends. There was no need to write in secret. The Reverend Mother and the Reverend Father trusted their daughter entirely, or so they claimed. Gideon Navegesimus would never do _anything_ to endanger the Ninth.

Clearly, Gideon Nav was some kind of spirit witch who’d cast a spell over the entire family. Clearly, she’d used some complicated necromancy to compel them all into thinking Dominicus could shine right out her ass. It was the only explanation. 

“You’d turn us into an extension of the Sixth or the Fifth,” Harrow accused. The Fifth also wrote unsolicited letters. Harrow had no idea if Gideon ever answered those.

The shuttle jolted to a stop. 

“Depends what they’re offering,” Gideon said as she stood and smoothed her robes. Her hands brushed fast across the black folds in an attempt to remove as much of the bone dust as she could. Harrow stood too. She adjusted her rapier and hooked her chain to her belt. 

Harrow didn’t really think Gideon was serious, but it was so hard to tell with her when she got like this. Harrow hoped that Camilla the Sixth was hideous, with hair coming out her ears and warts on her nose. She hoped Camilla the Sixth had a repulsive personality, one that even Gideon Nav could not abide. Harrow imagined Gideon pledging herself to the Sixth and her stomach twisted and her heart spewed from her mouth and splattered on the floor. Vile and treasonous perversion. Unfathomable.

“I hate you,” Harrow said, getting right to the heart of the matter.

“I know,” Gideon said. She smiled down at Harrow. “I forgive you for that.”

The doors opened. Gideon Navegesimus adjusted her glasses. Her hand tightened on the prayer bones twisted around her wrist. She looked straight ahead and, without another glance at her cavalier, she stepped out into the sun. 

Harrow the Ninth followed.


	2. Chapter 2

When the Reverend Daughter’s boots touched the stones of the landing terrace, she folded to her knees, as was traditional, and began to pray. Prayer bones clicked and clacked between her fingers and Harrow thought that perhaps she’d misjudged Gideon Navegesimus. She fell beside Gideon as her cavalier, just slightly behind, and she echoed Gideon’s prayers, her voice brimming with promises to the Tomb. 

It was a good start. 

It was a good start even though Gideon was wearing those stupid sunglasses. Other than the sunglasses, Gideon did just as Harrow knew she was supposed to do, and with her red hair covered by her veil, Gideon looked every inch the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House. 

And then the Seventh House arrived.

And then Dulcinea Septimus stumbled. 

And then Gideon Navegesimus rushed to her aid, Ninth robes flapping in the breeze, and Harrow knew that she’d never misjudged Gideon Nav a day in her life.

Gideon held the Seventh necromancer tenderly while she hacked up a great greasy glob of her guts. And as Harrow stood there trying to calm the molten hot anger that colored her face--thankfully hidden beneath her paint--the Seventh’s hulking cavalier stepped in and pressed the tip of his rapier to the back of Gideon’s neck. Gideon froze, her shoulders tight, her entire body tense. Harrow drew her sword--fuck, she loved that sound--and shouted for the Seventh to stand down. When the cavalier did not comply, Harrow shoved him aside and he stumbled away easily, just sort of stood there and watched while Harrow set a protective hand on Gideon’s shoulder and kept her blade centered on his chest, the point aimed right over his heart

In her haste, in her surprise and anger at the sudden threat to Gideon’s life, Harrow’s fingers fell too close to the collar of Gideon’s robe. Her fingertips brushed the skin of Gideon’s neck and Gideon started as though stung and shook a bit beneath her hand. This pushed Gideon out of her frozen state and she pulled back from the Seventh. She knocked Harrow’s hand away as she stood. When the Seventh necromancer began to apologize profusely for her cavalier, Gideon apologized back. She apologized because Harrow pushed the Seventh, because Harrow’s blade was drawn (but not drawn first!), because Harrow had done exactly as she ought to do in service to the Ninth.

Harrow couldn’t see the Reverend Daughter’s eyes, but she imagined them bright on the Seventh, dazzled by this sickly blue-eyed mouse of a woman, and Gideon’s words back on the shuttle echoed loud in Harrow’s ears. 

_“We’re about to get off this shuttle and meet seven other necromancers and seven other cavaliers. Who knows! Maybe I’ll hit it off with one of them.”_

Harrow had been nearly certain that Gideon was kidding, was simply saying it to get a rise out of Harrow, but looking at Gideon now, looking at the way the Seventh necromancer smiled back with blood on her teeth and a wad of goop in the handkerchief she held her hand, Harrow realized that it was even worse than she’d first thought. 

If Harrow was not careful, Gideon Nav was going to get herself killed.

Which was, frankly, absolutely fine with Harrow. 

**

“We should split up,” Harrow suggested shortly after they were shown to the Ninth’s quarters. “You do whatever it is necromancers do, I’ll survey the house. I’ll map it, every corridor and every door.”

It was a good plan. She’d thought it out while she’d choked down her dinner, nauseated by the Reverend Daughter’s hug-filled introduction to her old pen pals from the Sixth, by the way the hug with Camilla lingered just a little too long. There was also the fact that Camilla Hect looked perfectly normal, was attractive even, with her unblemished skin and her aquiline nose. Her hair was very dark and shiny and Harrow hated that too. Worst of all, the Sixth looked startled by Harrow’s presence, their eyes darting from Harrow right back to Gideon, and Harrow hated the way that Gideon suddenly seemed a little nervous, hated the realization that Gideon had written to Sextus about her, that the Sixth might even know what Gideon had proposed. 

Harrow was revolted by the way Gideon’s eyes followed the princesses of the Third during dinner, obvious even behind her sunglasses. She was disgusted by the way those eyes settled on Dulcinea Septimus, by the way Gideon laughed, just _blatantly_ flirting with the Seventh, so obvious that even the Sixth had to look away. Harrow had focused on coming up with a plan because she had to do _something_ to stop herself from barfing all over the table, her stomach churning in absolute desperation for any sort of distraction, but still. It was a plan that made sense. It was a good plan.

“No,” Gideon said, with no consideration at all. She opened her trunk and began carefully removing her folded stacks of black robes, which she placed on hangers in the wardrobe. This infuriated Harrow, who let clothes pile up in the corner of her cell and never made her bed. There were more important ways to spend their time. Even on the Ninth, where everything was a lot less pressing than it was at that moment, there were always more important ways of spending time than worrying out the neatness of a wardrobe. Gideon continued: “I need you to stay with me. There should be no splitting up unless it’s absolutely necessary. I mean, like totally unavoidable.”

“Fine,” Harrow said, venom in her voice and swords in her eyes. She backed toward the door. “No splitting up, got it. So let’s get started then!” If they stayed here, she might pick a fight with Gideon over the Sixth, and she didn’t want to do that. It was beneath her.

Gideon snorted out a laugh at that and checked her watch. “It’s late, Harrow.” She gestured toward the windows. “Look, it’s as dark as the Ninth out there. We’ll start in the morning.” 

“Are you serious?” Harrow watched Gideon set her prayer bones on the table beside the curtain-draped bed. “Are you getting ready for _bed_? 

Gideon shrugged out of her church robe and carefully hung that on a hook inside the wardrobe with the others. It still had smears of bone dust on it from the shuttle, which seemed to Harrow like it qualified the robe for a laundry pile instead of a wardrobe. When Gideon pulled a bag from her trunk and left the bedroom, Harrow followed her all the way to the bathroom and stood in the doorway while Gideon placed pots of Ninth grease paint on a small shelf. She watched while Gideon smeared her face with cold cream, watched while she began removing the painted skull from her skin. That was when it really began to sink in that Gideon was, in fact, serious. She was in for the night, had no plans of going anywhere. Harrow held an empty keyring, the black metal burning a circular hole into her palm, and Gideon was getting ready to settle in for a nap!

“You’re joking,” Harrow said to Gideon’s reflection in the bathroom mirror. “I see. This whole day has all been a hilarious joke at my expense. Ha ha. You’ve always been so very funny, haven’t you.” 

Gideon looked up, her face still smeared with gray, her hair mused and her eyes bright. She rubbed cream into her cheek, sludgy gray swirls beneath her fingertips, and her face stretched ridiculously so that when she answered Harrow it was with lips tight over her teeth, the sound of the words deformed with her face. Harrow managed to translate the garbled sentence to: “Everything is still going to be there in the morning.”

“Yeah,” Harrow agreed, “and every House will have a head start on the Ninth.”

“Maybe.” Gideon splashed water on her face, her next words said with her eyes squeezed shut. “But that might actually be a good thing. Let them think we aren’t a threat.”

“You _aren’t_ a threat. Look at you! My parents’ raised you too soft, Nav.”

“Your parents raised me to know when a fight is worth fighting,” Gideon said, wiping her face with a cloth. Her skin looked red and patchy. “And this one that you’re trying to start with me right now isn’t, Harrow. None of the fights you try to start with me are, but now--you’re my cavalier, aren’t you? Cavalier primary. You fought for this and you got what you wanted so I don’t understand why you’re so angry about it. Are you going to fight me the entire time we’re here?”

The answer to that was almost certainly _yes_. They both knew it. When Harrow didn’t voice her rebuttal right away Gideon went back to wiping the last bits of paint from her face, to poking at the pimples she uncovered beneath. That warmed Harrow, just a little, that Gideon’s skin still reacted so badly to the Ninth’s paint, even after all these years. It was confirmation of something they all knew, but chose to ignore: Gideon was an impostor. Gideon was just a weird little baby that fell out of the sky and destroyed everything.

Harrow tightened the grip on the keyring, adjusted the rapier at her hip. “Right then. Fuck sticking together and fuck you, Reverend Daughter. If you won’t take this seriously, I will.” 

Gideon would still get all the credit, of course, but it didn’t matter. Gideon was right about one thing. Harrow was cavalier primary. Gideon’s failures were Harrow’s failures now. Gideon’s success was Harrow’s success. One flesh, one end, and Harrow was just getting started.

She turned to her own trunk, still sitting where it was dropped by the First’s skeletons in the center of the main room, and rummaged through it until she found her journal. It mostly contained tips she’d picked up from Aiglamene over the years, a few bits of Ortus’s poetry that she actually quite liked (in that they didn’t make Harrow want to poke out her eardrums), and many _many_ pages of planning that detailed fantastical ways Harrow might rid the Ninth House of Gideon Navegesimus once and for all.

“Harrow,” Gideon started, once Harrow had gathered her things. “I have this under control, will you just trust that I know what I’m--” She tried to reach for Harrow and Harrow shook her off, almost shoved Gideon away, but caught herself at the last second and pulled her hands back away from Gideon. Gideon straightened her robe, glanced past Harrow as though checking their quarters to make sure no one was watching, that this little almost-skirmish hadn’t been observed. 

If they were on the Ninth and if Harrow had shoved Gideon, even just moved as if to shove her, if it had been witnessed, and if it got back to the Reverend Mother or Reverend Father before Gideon had a chance to intervene and smooth over any ruffled feathers, Harrow would have had hell to pay. She would have had a week or two down in the oss, or worse, a few new scars across her back. 

But if they were on the Ninth and no one had witnessed, Harrow knew that Gideon would not utter a word of it to anyone. If Harrow was lucky, Gideon might raise a skeleton or two, might let Harrow take out her frustrations on those instead. She wished Gideon would just _fight_ her, all in, bone to sword, blood and sweat and adrenaline and--Harrow wasn’t often that lucky. It didn’t matter. Gideon Navegesimus would not throw Harrow Nova under the proverbial shuttle. Even if Harrow really did shove Gideon, Gideon still would not tattle. She would not even get mad, not really. It was like Gideon agreed that she deserved whatever Harrow tried to dish out, which was the only reason Harrow had never actually punched Gideon in her stupid pimply face. 

None of that mattered. They were on the First, not the Ninth. They were alone and it did not matter who might see. Gideon didn’t raise a single skeleton to calm Harrow down, and that always made it worse, but right now it made it unbearably bad. Harrow felt her cheeks color, felt her skin start to burn. She felt like she was a child throwing a tantrum, when in fact, she had not been a child for a very long time. 

Harrow picked up her chain and cleared her throat. “I’ll report back what I find.”

She walked away from her necromancer, out into the collapsing corridors of the First.

**

When Harrow returned to the Ninth’s quarters it was after a thorough survey of the floors and unlocked doors, with a new key on the key ring in her hand, and a door that opened when she stuck the key inside. She returned feeling productive and even a little triumphant. And she found her necromancer curled up in bed, fast asleep and drooling. Harrow stood over Gideon. She watched Gideon breathe and drool for a very long time, stared at the smooth stretch of her eyelids and the bits of bone pushed through her ears, and she imagined picking up one of the bed’s many pillows and pressing it over Gideon’s peaceful slack-mouthed face. She could blame it on the Seventh, everyone saw that scene on the landing terrace. A perfect alibi. Poor Harrow the Ninth returned back to their quarters to find that Gideon was already dead.

She didn’t do it. Of course, Harrow didn’t do it. It wouldn’t be poor Harrow the Ninth, it’d be incompetent Harrow the Ninth. Also, Gideon’s ghost would probably stick around and tell everyone what really happened. The Sixth would catch on in no time. 

And the Ninth needed Gideon. They had no one else, and whose fault was that? 

No, it was not Harrow’s fault. She knew that, realistically. Logically she knew that. She’d been assured as much many times over the years--usually by Gideon. Perhaps someday it might actually sink in.

Logically, it was not Harrow’s fault. That did not change the fact that she was two hundred children who died for absolutely nothing unless Harrow could get Gideon through these trials, unless she could help the Ninth in every way available to her, with her sword and her brain, with dedication and determination.

She just needed Gideon to _care_. She needed Gideon to wake the fuck up! 

So no, Harrow did not smother her necromancer with a pillow that night. Instead she contemplated placing the journal, open to the map she’d created, on the table beside Gideon’s bed, where Gideon was sure to see it when she woke. She didn’t do that either. Gideon had never been a particularly nosy person, but Harrow did not want to chance Gideon reading back through the rest of the pages. Harrow didn’t recall every detail of what she’d written, but there was at least one particularly embarrassing entry where she spent several pages lamenting the length of Gideon’s legs and the breadth of her shoulders. It really wasn’t fair, was it? What did a necromancer need that kind of height for? What good were long arms to Gideon Navegesimus?

Harrow could not leave the journal lying out and open. She would have to wait to show Gideon in the morning. She’d wait to show her the single black key that now dangled from their key ring as well. That was hers too. She’d earned it. 

Harrow placed both beneath the pillow of the cavalier’s cot. She laid her sword at the side and her chain at the foot and then she climbed beneath the blankets, fully clothed, face painted and ready to go as soon as Gideon decided to get her lazy ass out of bed. 

**

She was sitting on the cot glaring at Gideon when Gideon finally decided to wake up. Gideon was still wiping the slip from her face with the back of her hand when Harrow, unable to wait another second said, “I got a key from Teacher, opens a hatch that goes into a basement, you’re going to want to check it out.”

“Oh,” Gideon said, her voice scratchy with sleep. “Wow, thanks. After breakfast we can head down.”

Harrow had anticipated this. She crossed the room to a chest of drawers and removed half a loaf of bread that she’d wrapped in a napkin for exactly this moment. “Here. Breakfast served. There’s dried drool crust on your cheek, by the way.”

“Oh,” Gideon said again. She wiped her cheek against her shirt (it didn’t help) and then took the bread from Harrow. “Thanks. Yum.”

Harrow sat on the bed beside Gideon and opened her journal. “Look,” Harrow said. She pointed toward her map, to each carefully marked and labeled doors. “I got down as much as I could. These circled doors? These are the ones that are locked. I asked Teacher and he would only give me the one key. The others we’ll have to figure out.”

Gideon ran her fingers over Harrow’s map, then looked at them as though expecting the blood Harrow had used to still be wet. Harrow pressed her tongue to the inside of her cheek and felt comforted by the pain she felt there.

“You did all of this while I was asleep?” 

“Of course,” Harrow said. “One of us had to do something.”

Gideon squinted at her. “Did you sleep, like, at all?”

“I slept enough.” 

“Okay,” Gideon said. She took a bite of the bread. Her face still looked a little puffy and her lips looked a little fuller than they usually did. She still had that dried spit on her cheek though, which balanced things back out to ‘blech.’ Gideon offered Harrow some of the bread. 

Harrow narrowed her eyes. “Gross, no. I’ll be in the other room when you’re ready. Hurry up.”

Later, when Gideon was painted and dressed and finally ready to get moving, she said, “So this is funny--not funny ha ha, but like, funny strange--I don’t think the Seventh cavalier is alive.”

Harrow’s hand was already on the doorknob, beyond ready to get started, and she had to really think about what Gideon just said to make sense of the statement. When she did, her only response was: “ _What_?”

“I’m serious. I was thinking about it after you left last night and I’m pretty sure he’s dead and Dulcinea is pulling his strings. He’s like a shell, a puppet.”

“But why--wait, so you’re saying that while she was looking at you with those giant sparkly eyes, she was manipulating her hulk of cavalier to stab you in the back?” At dinner the night before Harrow discovered that she was the smallest of the cavaliers, even smaller than the young Fourth cavalier primary, Jeannemary. Harrow had expected that and it wouldn’t matter. She’d trained her whole life with this scenario in mind. It was fine. Protesilaus the Seventh was still unnecessarily hulking. Harrow was happy to learn he was also unfortunately (for him) already dead.

“I think so?” Gideon chewed on a finger nail as she said this.

“So we challenge them!” Harrow burst out, forgetting all about the keys and the basement hatch for a moment, her focus entirely shifted to the new challenge at hand. “Let me fight!”

“No,” Gideon said. She shrugged Harrow off, literally shrugged, and when she looked down at Harrow, her eyes were practically orange, the same color as her hair. “I want to know more.”

The look on Gideon’s face betrayed exactly the sort of things about Dulcinea Septimus that Gideon was hoping to learn more about, which soured Harrow’s excitement considerably. Of course, Gideon would have an insta-crush on a dying woman with an already dead cavalier. Of course she’d want to know more about a woman who had threatened her within five minutes of arriving at Canaan House. The burning in Harrow’s chest wasn’t jealousy, it was just that this was all so _predictable_ and pitiful and maybe dangerous, and Harrow was _itching_ to face that danger head on, now, before it had a chance to catch them unaware, before it had a chance to ruin Harrow’s chance to make her life mean something.

“If he tries anything funny again, I’m going to kill him,” Harrow warned. “Again. I’m going to kill him for the second time.” 

Gideon paused at that. She gestured for Harrow to open the door. “Only if I ask you to. She can’t know that we know.”

Harrow shrugged. “Fine, okay. I’ll stand by and let them kill you, unless you _ask_ me to step in. That’s one way to get my House back, isn’t it?” She opened the door and waited for her necromancer to step out into the corridor. 

Gideon muttered something under her breath as she passed. Harrow was fairly certain she said, “I know a better way.” 

Harrow chose to ignore it. She locked the door to their quarters and fell in step behind Gideon. 

“Let’s go.”


	3. Chapter 3

“What is it?!” Harrow shouted. Before her, the enormous construct lunged, its arm-sword _thing_ just narrowly missing Harrow as she dodged out of the way, rolled through a cloud of bone dust. She used the momentum of her body to swing Samael’s chain along the floor of the chamber. The construct crumbled at impact and reformed in seconds. It was just enough time to get Harrow back on her feet. Over the speaker, her necromancer sputtered and gasped. Harrow growled. “Get on with it, Nav! Just fucking tell me already!”

This was Harrow’s sixteenth attempt evading (and sometimes fighting) the massive bone construct in the laboratory labelled IMAGING AND RESPONSE. Sixteen attempts, and countless more if they included all the pulverized constructs, before Gideon made a breakthrough on the theorem that governed the thing, and now that she _had_ figured it out, she let Harrow fight unaided for another full minute while she hyperventilated over the speaker and said things like “What the fuck,” and “ _arm_ ” and “This is fucking amazing. Harrow, you’re fucking _amazing_!”, which might have been just a little bit flattering if Harrow wasn’t currently fighting for her fucking life. 

“I can _see_ it,” Gideon said, dumbstruck, her voice fully saturated, _dripping_ with awe. “I can feel you fighting it, I can--” 

And then Harrow ducked under a swinging arm and Gideon swore again and said, “Go for the left lateral radius.”

“Finally!” She stopped the endless dodging and swung the chain. Her aim was true. The black pelvis of Samael’s chain hit the radius, exactly where Gideon guided her. The arm, with its arm-sword thing, fell to the floor and the blade of its hand disintegrated. It did not reform. Harrow shouted in triumph. “It worked!”

“Okay, okay, right-bottom tibia. Fuck, this is cool,” Gideon said, and Harrow laughed, actually _laughed_ as she took out the thing’s leg. 

“Side of the mandible,” Gideon called out. Then: “eighteenth rib.” And Harrow danced, rapier and chain in constant motion, until finally the Reverend Daughter said, “sternum!” 

Harrow punched up at the sternum with her chain gripped tight in her fist and the construct collapsed into dust around her. Only a large section of pelvis remained, and this Harrow smashed to pieces for good measure. 

As the door beeped and Gideon rushed in, a panel in the floor slid open, and a dark box was pushed up into the room. A display on the box began to flash with increasing percentages. Gideon froze with her hands on Harrow’s upper arms and Harrow thanked whoever had designed this thing for saving her from Gideon’s imminent embrace. The last thing Harrow needed was Gideon getting overwhelmed by emotion, pulling Harrow in and holding Harrow tight, Harrow’s face mashed up against Gideon’s tits. Granted, they were rather small tits, tightly confined, but that didn’t change the fact that Gideon was a lot taller than Harrow, which put them...right at the level of Harrow’s mouth. Harrow avoided hugging Gideon Nav at all costs. It wasn’t difficult, considering that Gideon was the absolute worst.

They stared down at the box, and when it popped open, Harrow shook Gideon away and reached for it. 

“It’s another key,” Harrow said, lifting the small crimson key up for Gideon to see. She pulled the keyring from her pocket and slipped the key onto the loop. The symbols adorning the surface were immediately familiar. “And I know exactly which door it opens.”

“Look at that. One done and it’s not even noon. We have time for--what?--three more? At least?” Gideon nudged Harrow in the side as she said this, like it was some kind of hilarious joke that she expected only Harrow would get.

“Four, I think,” Harrow said. “It depends how long it takes your shriveled little nut brain to crack the clues. One done and it’s not even noon, my ass.” (“What ass?” Gideon interjected.) “That took us two weeks!” In truth, Harrow was exhausted. In truth she had not had enough sleep, and could really use a meal and a nap. She’d never admit it. 

“I’m starving,” Gideon said, a very convenient change of subject. “Once we’re home, I’m introducing this _lunch_ thing into Drearburh’s schedule. I like it.”

**

Gideon followed Harrow’s directions, led them through the corridors, her somewhat-faithful cavalier following half a step behind her as protocol demanded. They were almost to the door Harrow was certain would match the crimson key when Gideon stopped so abruptly that Harrow walked right into her back. Walking into Gideon was like hitting a wall, which always struck Harrow as strange considering that Gideon was a necromancer and had never attempted to build a single real muscle in her life. 

“What the fuck, Nav, watch it.” She pushed Gideon forward, but Gideon didn’t budge, just knocked back against Harrow, swatted at her like she was a very small bug. Granted, Harrow didn’t push _hard_ \--she wasn’t stupid--but Gideon’s reaction made the idea very tempting. That swatting thing was just offensive. Harrow hated when Gideon acted like Harrow couldn’t wrestle her to the ground in a fair fight, no weapons on either side, just Harrow’s impressive arms against Gideon’s stupid height. 

Harrow could certainly take her down now. Gideon hardly seemed to notice her. She was too busy staring out the plex. Harrow craned her neck to look and groaned when she saw what had caught her necromancer’s attention. 

It was Dulcinea Septimus in a silly hat, stretched out on a rusty old chair. She seemed to glow in the warm afternoon light and Gideon said, “Did you know Pal’s been writing to her since they were kids, just like he did with us?”

 _Us._

The letters had started before Harrow’s parents booted Harrow and replaced her with a better model. The reminder wasn't necessary. She narrowed her eyes at Gideon’s cloaked back.

“Why would I know that?” 

“Oh,” Gideon turned and glanced down at Harrow as though she just remembered that Harrow was there. “I thought I might have said.”

Maybe Gideon had said, but Harrow made it a point not to listen to anything Gideon said if she could help it. She tried to make it a point not to see or hear Gideon at all. She strived for a Gideon-less existence. Or she had, until the invitation from the First arrived and Harrow realized with mounting horror that it was addressed to Gideon Navegesimus and _Ortus Nigenad_ and that Harrow Nova would be left behind to do...what? There was nothing else for her on the Ninth. She would be the primary cavalier to the heir of the House of the Ninth or she would stay behind, alone, with parents that did not want her, a House that could do without her, and not a single soul within four decades of her age. Harrow knew, then and there, that it was time to step into the role she’d trained for her entire life, which meant it was time to start listening to Gideon Nav.

Gideon’s friendship with _Sex Pal_ though. Even after the invitation arrived, Harrow still hadn't wanted to hear about that. She once contemplated telling her parents that Gideon’s friendship with the Sixth had shifted from pen pals to _sex pals_ , and that Gideon was writing down sick pornographies and exporting them to other houses, that she was receiving worse pornography in return (worse because it was probably well-written), but Harrow had been down that road once before, and knew how it would go. Gideon would present them with the letters. Her parents would read them, and they would smile, because of course there was no actual pornography contained within, just some jokes in bad taste told by disgusting teenagers, just a few complimentary sentences crushing on Camilla the Sixth. Harrow could still hear the way her mother had _laughed_.

“They don’t seem like friends,” Harrow said. When Gideon had found the Sixth on that first night at Canaan House, they’d embraced like they’d known each other for years, because in the ways that mattered, they had. From what Harrow recalled (and she'd paid close attention to the Seventh following the scene on the landing strip), Dulcinea Septimus never even said hello.

“I’m going out there,” Gideon said, but she didn’t move, just stood there frozen in place.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Harrow said. She pressed another gentle shove to Gideon’s back. “We aren’t here to make friends. Dulcinea Septimus isn’t going to make you a Lyctor. Let’s go, we’re almost there.”

That got Gideon moving… toward the wrong door. 

“Oh, fuck _you_ ,” Harrow breathed, and her heart turned and her stomach twisted and she followed her necromancer onto the terrace.

**

It had been a somewhat pleasant two weeks of destroying constructs and putting Harrow’s life on the line, but that all came crashing back down the moment Gideon saw a pretty dying girl lying on a terrace. Harrow was back to her original conclusion: Gideon Navegesimus did not intend to take this seriously. Gideon had no strategy, no plan at all. She had not cracked open a single text since they arrived, had not written a single note, had not reviewed a single theorem. In fact, it had been nearly a week since Gideon discovered the Lady Septimus lounging, and Gideon still had not returned to the matter of the red key. 

Instead, Gideon wasted hours on various terraces lounging beside Dulcinea, reading her books aloud while Dulcinea carefully pressed the tips of her fingers against Gideon’s cloaked arms and laughed. 

The apparently-already-dead Protesilaus the Seventh was nowhere to be found during most of these afternoons, but Harrow was there, sitting on a bench, practically vibrating in her anger and frustration. She could _feel_ the other Houses getting ahead, could _feel_ Gideon’s failure. Gideon pretended not to notice. Occasionally Gideon would bring up Protesilaus or the Sixth, carefully, her eyes darting toward Harrow, but never lingering long.

Dulcinea gave nothing away. 

“Just ask your best friend Sex Pal.”

“He’s not my best friend,” Gideon said, though they wrote to each other like they were best friends and spoke to each other like they were best friends and hugged each other like they were best fucking friends.

“Just ask him and _move on_. Maybe they had a fight. Maybe she got sick of his tedious letters. Maybe she hacked up his memory and coughed it out into her handkerchief.”

They were sitting in the central atrium, the one with the fountain, tucked in beside each other on a dusty old sofa. They’d been roaming the corridors searching for a skeleton that happened to be missing an upper molar--a challenge that Gideon had been puzzling over in one of the laboratories--but eventually Gideon decided that sitting and watching from one central location made more sense than passing by the thing repeatedly. It was, in fact, what Harrow had suggested from the start. It was just like Gideon to wait it out and then take the credit.

“I will ask him, I plan to, but--okay, so I guess I like her?” (“She’s dragging around a dead cavalier!” Harrow choked out.) “Keep your voice down! I don’t want to make it weird for anyone.”

Gideon was already making it weird. Spending entire afternoons reading romance novels (almost all of then focused on horrifyingly inappropriate and illicit relationships between necromancers and their cavaliers) was absolutely making it _weird_. The way Gideon sometimes looked at Harrow during the really illicit bits, like she was trying to rub it in Harrow’s face that she had moved on, that she’d found someone who _liked_ inappropriate relationships, as though she thought Harrow might _care_ , was so far beyond weird it was pathetic, just really very sad.

Harrow bit her tongue, once hard enough to draw blood, until Gideon gave up on the skeleton for the afternoon and returned to their rooms. 

Safely shut inside, Harrow said, “What would the Ninth _do_ with someone like Dulcinea Septimus? What would the Seventh want with the Ninth?”

“She seems to want quite a bit to do with the Ninth,” Gideon sniffed, but her brow was furrowed too. “Why--?” 

“She already said she couldn’t abide the paint and she’ll get sick of looking at your disgusting eggy eyes sooner than you think,” Harrow said. “I know I have.” 

Gideon liked the attention, Harrow understood that, but come on. Dulcinea wouldn’t ever make a good match for Gideon. Dulcinea wasn’t going to _marry_ her. The Ninth could never live up to the Seventh’s romantic ideals. Dulcinea Septimus would take one look at Drearburh and have her puppeted cavalier carry her screaming back to her shuttle and that would be the end of that. Harrow was just trying to save Gideon the heartache. 

**

So there was that, but that wasn’t all of it. One morning, Gideon announced that she was going to bring the Dulcinea strangeness to Palamedes Sextus. She said this while they were still in their rooms, while they were still in _bed_ , while Gideon was supposed to be sound asleep. Dominicus was still well below the horizon when Harrow slipped out of her cot. She liked having the early morning hours to herself. She used them to go over her notes, to try to suss out how far behind they were. Sometimes she did a quick stalk of the tower just to see what she could see. Not that morning. Harrow was nearly to the door when Gideon’s announcement erupted in the room, her voice clear and booming, like she’d been awake for a long time. 

“I’m going to talk to him about it today.”

Harrow was so startled by this that she nearly drew her rapier. 

But later when Gideon sat down opposite Sextus and Camilla the Sixth, she did not ask about Dulcinea. Instead, she leaned over the table, voice low, and said: “ _I’ll show you mine if you show me yours_.”

Harrow and Camilla both looked up at that, Camilla’s dark eyes catching Harrow’s with a desiccated look that confirmed the Sixth cavalier thought Gideon Navegesimus a bit touched in the head. That, at least, was comforting. Palamedes Sextus did not seem fazed. He was quiet for a long time. He took another bite of his breakfast, a nice slow sip of his tea. He shared a look with his cavalier, and then he said: “Come to our rooms after breakfast and we can discuss who is showing who what.”

Gideon flopped back into her chair and her hand came down to knock once against Harrow’s knee. Harrow jerked away.

“Deal.”

**

“When you said you were going to talk to _him_ about _it_ , I thought you meant the Seventh,” Harrow said. She was walking too close to Gideon, her shoulder occasionally brushing up against Gideon’s side. She tried to keep her voice low. There was no one around, but the Canaan House skeletons were _very_ good and neither of them were convinced they weren’t spying on everyone and reporting back to Teacher.

“I was,” Gideon said. “And then I chickened out, but look, at the very least we’re about to double the amount of information we have, which I think is pretty good for one morning.”

“You’re making an alliance with our strongest competition here,” Harrow said. “Maybe we’ll get something in return, but you’re giving them our only advantage.”

“In exchange for theirs. And anyway, I don’t actually think this is a competition?”

Harrow laughed, high and mean. “You’re an even bigger bonehead than I thought.” 

What version of life did Gideon live back on the Ninth that she had not learned Drearburh’s most fundamental lesson? _Everything_ was a competition. Everything. Harrow’s parents sacrificed two hundred children to produce Harrow, and when Harrow didn’t live up to their expectations, they replaced her with the only living competition Harrow had. Harrow had tried _so fucking hard_ , her child’s eyes blurry with theorem after theorem that she couldn’t comprehend, couldn’t do a thing with, and Gideon sat beside her, looked over Harrow’s shoulder, and from that briefest glance she transformed a small pile of bones into a full construct, just one tiny drop of blood oozing out of her nose. That was all it took. Harrow’s parents tossed Harrow aside, a failure, and propped up a child that arrived under mysterious circumstances, a child that survived when she should not have, a child that was better than Harrow in every way. Harrow spent her entire life striving to overcome her competitors in any way she was allowed, and now Gideon Nav stood in front of her and had the audacity to imply that she never intended to compete. 

“No, I’m serious,” Gideon continued, apparently oblivious to the raging fire consuming her cavalier. “So a bunch of Lyctors have died over the myriad, right, and the Emperor is looking to replace them. He’s looking to replace _a bunch_ of Lyctors, not just one. We should be working together on this, because if we get it right, we’re all going to be working together for a stupid long time.”

Right, so Gideon Nav was going to die there. If someone else didn’t kill her, Harrow was ready to finish the job.

The Sixth’s rooms were exactly as Harrow expected the Sixth’s rooms to look, covered windows and flimsy plastered everywhere. They were the exact opposite of the Ninth’s rooms. With the exception of the notes and maps Harrow had recorded in her journal, there was not a single scrap of flimsy to be found. Gideon had not written down a single thing since they arrived, and she kept all the windows uncovered, the light just streaming in and shining off her collection of bones. 

Glancing in toward the bedroom, Harrow found that the beds were both neatly made, though Camilla’s cot was piled high with weapons. Harrow made a mental reminder to watch their backs around the Sixth.

Sextus gestured to an old mattress on the floor and when Gideon folded herself down to sit, Harrow realized with horror that the room had no other chairs. Harrow declined the offer. She would stand, thanks. She folded her arms behind her back, stood perfectly straight and perfectly still.

“All right, let’s negotiate. I was wondering how long it would take you to suggest it,” Sextus said, getting directly to the task at hand. He was crouched on the mattress beside Gideon, their knobby knees pressed together. Camilla leaned against the wall beside Harrow, silent and watching. “How many do you have?” 

“One,” Gideon said. “So far. We’re working on the molar. You?”

“We’ve completed three of the trials. We have one key. Don’t bother with the molar unless you’re a completionist. The key was already claimed and not by us.”

“Fuuuck,” Gideon groaned. “Okay, that’s fine. We can stop wasting our time. How do you want to do this then?”

“You said you have a map?”

Gideon held out a hand toward her cavalier. “Harrow--”

Harrow looked up at nobody in particular. “Do I have a map?” She thought she saw Camilla smile out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t turn to make sure. 

“Okay, we’ll discuss maps later,” Gideon said. “For now--”

“ _I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,_ ” Sextus agreed.

**

“I haven’t been inside yet,” Gideon admitted, standing outside the large door.

Sextus seemed startled by that, which comforted Harrow somewhat. _Thank you_. She hadn't realized it would be so hard to find another person who could think. 

“Why the hell not?”

Gideon shrugged. She leaned over Harrow’s shoulder and watched as Harrow slid the key into the lock. Harrow had already been inside this room. She turned this key the very first night they obtained it. She was unable to get Gideon back on course following a long afternoon of batting her eyelashes at the Lady Septimus, but when Gideon retired for the night, Harrow slipped out. She had to _know_. If this wasn’t the door that matched the key, the very least she could do to propel them forward was to find the door that did. She didn’t have to do any additional searching that night. She was right about the door. The key turned with a satisfying click then just as it did now.

Harrow stepped in first, followed by Gideon, then Palamedes Sextus. Camilla the Sixth brought up the rear, shutting the door behind them. Gideon and Palamedes went straight for a laboratory table stacked with flimsy, which left Camilla and Harrow standing together by the door. Harrow stepped into the center of the room, where the floor had been cleared like it was a miniature training room.

Camilla tilted her head toward the other side of the room. It was set up as a small living space, most likely short-term, temporary. Harrow had already determined that these rooms once belonged to a necromancer and cavalier from the Second House. She’d already read the theorem that Gideon and Palamedes were hunched over, though the words meant very little to her. 

Harrow made some effort to look like this was all new. She peered at the bookshelf, stared up at the rifle, sat down on one of the beds and opened the drawers of the nightstand. There was a crumpled scrap of flimsy on the floor that she'd missed on her first visit. She picked it up, pulled its edges between the tips of her fingers. 

“Second House,” she concluded aloud. When Camilla turned to look at her, Harrow gestured toward the old Second House seal she’d discovered in the drawer. 

Across the room, Sextus was discussing the age of the room and its contents. Gideon mumbled and grunted in response.

“Our key unlocks the Third’s study,” Camilla said. 

Harrow nodded. Camilla seemed to read this exchange as an invitation of some sort. She abandoned the wardrobe she was perusing and came to stand beside the bed opposite Harrow. Harrow felt her stomach drop when she realized that Camilla looked like she was preparing for a nice long chat. Camilla the Sixth did not look the sort to engage in nice long chats, and she didn’t look like she thought this one would be very pleasant. Harrow braced herself. Camilla said: "We’ve heard a lot about you.”

Harrow’s insides cursed and screamed and died.

“Yeah,” Harrow managed. “I bet.” Gideon Navegesimus had a big mouth and a loose hand. “It’s funny though. She never talked about you, not at all in all those years.” 

Camilla grunted. She hardly seemed fazed by Harrow’s lie. Of course Gideon talked about Camilla. Harrow knew that Camilla and Palamedes had fallen together naturally. She knew that Camilla never had to fight to be recognized as her adept’s cavalier. Everything was a test on the Sixth too, a competition in the form of an examination, and Camilla had passed her test at the age of twelve. Harrow knew that Palamedes spoke very highly of her, so highly that Gideon developed a crush on this mystery girl around the time she was thirteen and Camilla was fifteen. 

“Has Gideon--” Harrow paused, unsure she really wanted to ask, but equally unsure she could stand not to know.

Camilla didn’t press. For some reason, this silence convinced Harrow to continue.

“Has she been flirting?” Harrow asked. She felt her face growing hot and she immediately wanted to take it all back. “Actually, nevermind. Please don’t answer that.”

Camilla stood there, frozen. She wasn’t looking at Harrow, just at a spot of mold on the wall, and it was only then that Harrow remembered that Gideon had almost definitely told the Sixth about her petition for marriage and had probably told them about Harrow’s refusal too. It was only then that she realized she sounded like--

“I didn’t mean--” 

“--with the Warden?” Camilla asked.

“No--I don’t know. I meant with you, but--”

“No,” Camilla said, fast and clipped. Too fast, too clipped. “Neither of us.”

“Okay, I--what about Dulcinea Septimus?”

“Is Navegesimus flirting with the Seventh?”

“Yes,” Harrow said, and then realized that Camilla was asking for clarification rather than posing her own question. “No, I mean, what about the Master Warden and the Seventh?” If Gideon was not going to ask Sextus, Harrow was going to ask his cavalier. She had to find _something_ to make the horror of this conversation worthwhile. She was ready to move on from this whole business.

Camilla looked back over her shoulder, toward the table where Sextus and Gideon were hunched together, side-by-side. Gideon’s hands were moving, as though she felt very strongly about whatever it was they’d just found. Harrow hoped that was it, that whatever it was pushed Gideon away from these frivolous social concerns and back to the reason they were all there. Camilla turned back to Harrow.

“They write letters,” Camilla said. More pen pals for Sex Pal.

“Did they--was there a disagreement?”

“No,” Camilla said, immediately. 

“Has she been friendly since you arrived?”

“Not particularly.”

Harrow looked down at the flimsy in her hand, turned it over and saw that there was writing there. She read it, froze, read it again. What--?

“Are you all right?” Camilla asked.

“No,” Harrow said, then remembering where she was, she amended: “Yes.” She realized how she must look and she forced her face to relax, her forehead to smooth. She shoved the flimsy into her pocket, pushed the words to the back of her mind, and then she looked up and cleared her throat. “You don’t find that strange?”

“I do,” Camilla said. Her eyes darted to Harrow’s pocket and back, but she did not ask. 

After a long moment locked like that, considering each other, Harrow said: “Can we pretend this awkward conversation never happened?” 

Camilla relaxed. “I’d love to.”

**

When Gideon came to Harrow to discuss the petition she’d presented to Harrow’s parents, it was with bright eyes and flushed cheeks and Harrow knew at once that there was nothing that Gideon could say, nothing she could say while looking like _that_ , that Harrow would ever want to hear. Gideon found her in the narthex, cornered her on a bench intended for visiting pilgrims, pushed into a corner where they couldn't be overheard and wouldn't be disturbed. 

Gideon Navegesimus had presented a petition to marry Harrow Nova. Their union would restore the Ninth’s bloodline. It would right the wrongs of the past and Harrow would be a Reverend Daughter once more. 

Harrow listened to Gideon’s words, listened to the way that they rushed out of Gideon’s mouth. Gideon tripped and stumbled over the syllables, shook her head and tried to cover up her nervousness with a laugh. Harrow squeezed her eyes shut, her hand tight on her chain, knuckles white with the strain. She tried to envision it, tried to imagine what it would be like, her hand in Gideon’s hand, their futures formally joined with the curve of Gideon’s mouth pressed to her own. She considered it for one sick feverish second and then, her voice dripping with disgust, she said: “You’re out of your goddamn mind if you think that I could ever love you.”

It was a stupid thing to say--what right did any of them have to hope for something as unlikely as love in a place like Drearburh?-- but it did its job. Gideon’s face crumbled, and Harrow watched it, savored it for that very brief moment before Gideon pulled herself together, built herself back up. She looked better like that, calm and collected, her words even and measured. The words themselves were still shit.

“You don’t have to love me,” Gideon promised. “I wouldn’t ask you to do that.”

Harrow Nova fought with rapier and chain. The Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House fought back with smiles and sickening pity. 

“Think about it, okay? Will you consider it?”

Harrow would never consider it. Harrow was not the Reverend Daughter and she would never be the Reverend Mother. Harrow Nova was the best cavalier the Ninth had ever produced. She would not be left behind as Gideon’s wife. She would not sit at home, her parents' bodyguard, while Ortus Nigenad accompanied Gideon to the First. Harrow was not born to be the Reverend Daughter, that was made abundantly clear, but she was still a daughter of the House of the Ninth. She was removed from the Reverend line, and that was--that was that. She had made her decision a long time ago. She would bear the sword. She would carry the blade. She was the rightful cavalier primary to the heir. 

“I am the unfulfilled vow,” Harrow said, her voice low and deadly serious. 

“Ugh,” Gideon groaned. Her head fell back in exasperation. Her hood fell off to reveal her blasphemously bright hair. 

“The bloody teeth of the unkissed skull.”

“I _know_ , Harrow.”

Harrow could not accept anything less.

**

Harrow waited until they’d finished their exploration of the Second study. She waited until they’d thoroughly explored the Third. She waited while Gideon and Palamedes discussed various theories, the sensible notion that this was a competition--may the best House win--and the nonsensical notion that this was a collaborative effort where they might _all_ win if they simply worked together. They might even make some lifelong friends! And then finally, well after Dominicus had disappeared back below the horizon, Gideon and Harrow departed the Sixth’s rooms and Harrow pressed the scrap of flimsy into the palm of Gideon’s hand.

Gideon’s eyebrows rose immediately, and when she looked at Harrow it was with a crooked little smile pulling at her mouth, as though she thought that maybe Harrow had written her a secret love note at some point during the day.

“Read it,” Harrow said, her mouth firm.

Gideon read it. She turned it over, looked at the back, and then read it again.

“Where did you get this?”

“Second House study.”

Gideon’s brow furrowed. She read it a third time, and this time when she looked up at Harrow, her eyes were bright and her mouth was twisted with questions.

“Is this a joke? Everything in there was from the fossil record--all of it. And we were--” She paused, and thought this over. She searched the flimsy again, and then searched Harrow’s face for answers.

Harrow held Gideon’s gaze, stared back into the scared custard yellow eyes of her necromancer. "It's not a joke."

Finally, Gideon shrugged. “So, like, _what the fuck_?”

It was a very good question.

“You tell me,” Harrow said. She was very proud of how calm she sounded. “You tell me what the fuck it’s about.”

Gideon shrugged again, her stupid long arms flapping. “How the hell should I know?”

Harrow felt her calm dissolve and she reached for Gideon, her hands on Gideon’s arms as she steered the necromancer toward an empty room and pushed her inside. Harrow followed her in and slammed the door behind them. She jabbed her finger at the flimsy, at Gideon’s palm beneath. 

“This just confirms what I’ve suspected all along,” Harrow said. 

“What the _fuck_ , Harrow? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Where did you even find this?”

“The floor,” Harrow said. She took a step closer to Gideon, chin thrust up toward Gideon’s confused face. “So, a time-traveling imposter, is that it, _Navegesimus_? That could be it, couldn’t it? Gideon Nav, mysterious as fuck right from the start. You survived the disaster of my conception while still in your pram, right next to that vent, and all it ever did was make you _stronger_ , like some resurrected monster from a storybook. You fell out of the sky and in less than a year, you and I were the only ones left. Four years, and you’d successfully cast me aside. I understand it now. You were sent to infiltrate the Ninth. You were sent to destroy everything, starting with me, the rightful heir, and ending with the Locked Tomb.”

Gideon listened to all of this, her eyes darting back and forth over Harrow’s face and her mouth slack. When Harrow stopped, when she waited for a response, Gideon sighed, a big heavy release of breath.

“Well?” Harrow pressed. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?”

“ _Maybe_? That’s it?”

“What the hell else am I supposed to say, Harrowhark?” _Harrowhark_. “What do you want me to say? Yeah, I had this all planned from the time I was a tiny stupid baby? You’ve figured out my nefarious schemes! Here, listen to my evil laugh.” 

“Shut up,” Harrow said when Gideon actually did start to laugh. Gideon didn’t hear her, or she heard her and didn’t stop. Something in Harrow snapped at that and she reached out, set both hands against Gideon’s chest, and she pushed hard. Gideon stumbled back, tripped on her own robe, and fell to the floor. She wasn't laughing now. Harrow’s hand went for her sword but Gideon was fast. She raised two constructs before Harrow drew her blade, and they pulled Harrow's arms away from her weapons, held her still. Harrow did not fight back, just stared down at Gideon's flushed face. Blood began to collect at the corners of Gideon's eyes. Harrow was breathing heavy, her heart racing beneath her ribs.

"Are we done?" Gideon asked. Her voice shook, just slightly. Harrow wished she'd get angry. She wished Gideon would spit insults and tear at her with bone hands and bone fists. Gideon wasn't even good for that.

Harrow shook the skeletons off and they fell away. She took a step back.

"We're done."

The scrap of flimsy was on the floor by Gideon’s feet. Harrow left it there. She left her necromancer sprawled across the old carpet. Harrow left the room and slammed the door shut behind her.

**

And then there was the Third. 

Well, there was half the Third. Coronabeth Tridentarius, the Crown Princess of Ida. The Third was far worse than the afternoons on the terrace with the Seventh, worse than the Sixth’s hugs, worse than Camilla’s stilted attempt to ask Harrow about the petition and proposal. The flirtation with the Third was the worst of them all. First, because _look_ at her, and second, there were two of them. If Gideon hit it off with one of the Third princesses, their House might actually approve an alliance, might not try to lay claim to the offspring. So twice a week Gideon swam laps with Coronabeth Tridentarius while Harrow beat the shit out of a training dummy, and a few times out of Naberius the Third (repeatedly besting _Babs_ was one of the few bright spots of Harrow’s time on the First). Other times Babs swam laps with Corona and Gideon while Harrow stood at the edge of the pool and scowled down at her necromancer, Gideon’s robe held tight in her hands, her foot tapping impatient against the wet tiles.

Harrow hated this. She hated Gideon’s friendship with the Sixth. She hated how Gideon doted on the Seventh, how she groveled at Septimus’s feet. More than that, Harrow hated the way that Gideon looked at the Crown Princess of Ida. 

“Why don’t you just marry her?” Harrow said on the way back to their rooms after an evening swim with Coronabeth--the evening swims were new, had come after their fight over the ten thousand-year-old scrap of flimsy, after Harrow accused Gideon of being a supervillain sent to the Ninth to tear it all down. 

Gideon told her she didn’t have to come, as though Harrow was really going to leave Gideon unattended with the Third. If they returned to the Ninth with the Third or the Seventh in tow, who were Harrow’s parents going to blame? It wasn’t going to be Gideon Navegesimus. Her only fault was falling in love. Harrow Nova was her cavalier. It would be Harrow’s failure and Harrow’s hide.

So Harrow went and she spent the entire evening biting at the inside of her cheek. Right before Gideon left the pool Corona brushed wet hair off Gideon’s forehead and said, “You really have the most remarkable eyes,” and Gideon had nearly swallowed her own tongue. If Harrow wasn’t standing there, if she hadn’t purposely dropped their ring of keys onto the ground (wrapped in Gideon’s robe--there was no _I’ll show you mine if you show me your_ allowed with the Third.) startling the two women, Harrow was pretty sure Gideon and Corona would still be in the pool, probably with their tongues probing around in each others’ mouths. Harrow felt sick just thinking about it, a stomach-turning, head-spinning, heart-racing sick.

“Maybe I will marry her,” Gideon snapped back, uncharacteristically sharp. Gideon had been on edge since Harrow called her a monster and pushed her to the floor. 

“You’ll destroy the Ninth,” Harrow hissed now from half a step behind Gideon’s shoulder. “You’d turn us into an extension of the Third.”

Gideon spun around. “ _You’re_ the one who refused to keep the line intact. You’re the one who can never get over herself long enough to consider the good of her House, or the possibility that maybe--”

“I’ll die before I tie myself to you.”

“You’re _already_ tied, Harrow the _Ninth_. You tied yourself good and tight! Wasn’t that you that knelt down beside me? One flesh, one end, remember?” Gideon was always so good at making everything _worse_. 

“You know what I mean.”

“Fine. Go ahead and die, Harrow. Die all you want! I certainly won’t stop you. Fuck, you’re such a little bitch sometimes.” 

Gideon would stop her. That was the entire problem! She would step in before she stopped to consider whether her intervention was wanted, just like she always had. Gideon stilling Harrow’s father’s hand. Gideon pulling Harrow back from an air lock. Gideon bolting the door and holding Harrow tight while she raged.

“You dropped into this world and you stole my _life_.”

Gideon reeled back, looked like she’d been slapped, as though this was the first time Harrow had ever said it, as though they hadn’t been locked in this same fight, this same competition for eighteen years. Fuck, what was wrong with Gideon? Look at these other necromancers, wasting away for their craft, and then there was Gideon Navegesimus, rivaled only by the Crown Princess of Ida. They glowed with good health, their bodies solid while the other adepts looked like they might break if Harrow applied a single finger of pressure. Corona actually had muscles. Gideon surely did not. Gideon never lifted a damn thing if she could help it. Still, she’d apparently been blessed with only the _slightest_ hint of a necromancer’s build, looked totally normal in the black swimsuit, in the swim shorts that hugged her thighs, ending just above her knees.

The paint was dripping off Gideon’s face. She looked like a smeared mess, like a total jerk, and Corona hadn’t even noticed, had just stood there with that bright smile, those heaving breasts, those fingers on Gideon’s--

Harrow grabbed at Gideon, her hands twisting in Gideon’s robe. Gideon made a small noise at that, a noise that sounded a little like a gasp and a little like Gideon was choking on something, a noise that Harrow instantly understood, and in understanding it, something within her broke. She made her next move before her body had a moment to repair the malfunction. She kissed Gideon Nav.

Gideon fell into Harrow immediately. She kissed Harrow back with a mouth too eager to touch, with a tongue too eager to taste, and Harrow found herself struggling to stay afloat, to control the kiss that she’d started. She found herself struggling to stay whole. 

It lasted only a moment before Gideon was pushing Harrow away, holding Harrow back and searching her face. 

“This doesn’t mean I like you,” Harrow said. 

“That’s okay.” It came out of Gideon’s mouth in a rush, too fast. It was pathetic, really, truly pitiful. 

Maybe that was why Harrow kissed her again. 

Maybe that was why the second kiss was harder, sharper, teeth and desperation. Gideon’s knees buckled and Harrow pulled her down until they were kneeling in a puddle of their robes, tucked away in a dusty alcove on the First, completely consumed. Harrow bit the salt and the paint from Gideon’s lips and despised the taste of it on her tongue. She kissed Gideon’s lips apart, and was disgusted by the way that Gideon gave, the way she took whatever Harrow offered, the way she suckled at Harrow’s mouth, at her teeth and at her tongue. Harrow kissed Gideon and she felt Gideon shake beneath her hands, felt her whole body shiver and quake, and she knew that later Gideon would shrug this off. Later Gideon would say she was wet from the pool, chilled through, and Harrow would try her hardest to believe it. 

Harrow had to believe it.

She kissed Gideon again.


	4. Chapter 4

If Harrow thought that kissing Gideon Nav would pull her necromancer’s focus back to the Ninth, to the Lyctor competition, she would have been sorely disappointed. If Harrow thought that kissing Gideon would stop her from flirting with the Seventh or from courting the Third, Harrow was wrong there too. 

Luckily Harrow had not thought any of that. She had not thought anything. She’d simply acted and once she started it, she wasn’t sure how to stop. Whatever bit of her had broken, she couldn’t figure out how to repair it. She wasn’t even sure that she _liked_ it, but every night since that first they crashed into each other, kissed until their mouths grew tired and their lips grew sore. They kissed until Harrow found herself moving over Gideon, their bodies shifting against each other in response to their mouths and their tongues, until one of them pulled away, not ready to think about what might come next. 

In the morning they said nothing about it. They dressed as they always had and fixed their paint like they always did. If they arrived for breakfast before the Sixth, they ate in silence, heads down, quiet until someone spoke to Gideon--few chose to speak to Harrow--until Palamedes sat down opposite and said, “Another morning then.”

And Gideon said, “I was thinking we’d return to Laboratory Five?”

“Four,” Palamedes countered. 

And they went on like that until they had a plan for the day. Their plans were always the laboratories. They went back and forth at length about who had which keys and how many keys were left while Harrow and Camilla each kept notes to refer back to when they were inevitably asked to recall how the conversation unfolded and what they’d decided. 

“I’m not your secretary,” Harrow snapped once, and that night Gideon kissed her with a little more force, pushed things a little further than they had before, and Harrow forgot about the uncomfortable faces the Sixth had pulled and the fact that Camilla the Sixth never spoke like that to the Master Warden.

One thing Gideon and Sextus both firmly agreed upon was that the Lyctor studies themselves, while interesting, were perhaps not as important as the actual trials down in the facility, so they turned their focus to those. There was no way for them to obtain every key, but they could complete every trial, and if they understood how some of the trials related to the theorem in their respective studies, then they could hopefully work out the rest. If they happened to find a key at the end, good for everyone, if not, they mastered the trial and moved on to the next. If Gideon and Harrow completed Laboratory Five while Palamedes and Camilla were still working in Laboratory Four, the Ninth would share whatever they learned with the Sixth, would watch while the Sixth completed the trial in Lab Five, and vice versa. If advice was needed, it was offered, and Gideon never once bristled at being advised, not even the few times she was corrected. Palamedes seemed to delight in it. 

Harrow felt certain they were all going to lose this competition, that they were nothing but fools, leaving themselves open when they should be locking up tight. She dreaded the day another house appeared to beg entry into this alliance. She felt sick knowing that Gideon’s face would light up, that she’d offer all of the Ninth’s secrets on a platter.

Still, this collaboration, more than anything else, was what got Gideon back in the game. It was the synergistic effort that drove her toward the answer, the debates with Palamades, the jokes when Harrow brought up her own evolving theory--which was that the trials were good and informative, but what they actually needed to be looking for was a door that gave them access to the huge portion of Canaan House that was currently inaccessible.

If it was up to Harrow, she’d start picking the locks for the Lyctor studies they’d completed for which the key was already claimed, but then, she didn’t really think the real answers were in any of the studies at all. The real answers were behind one of the doors in the facility below the hatch. The real answers went deep.

“Deep,” Gideon repeated, when Harrow said as much, breaking their silent morning with the thought that had been pulling at her for weeks. “Like the Tomb?”

Maybe that was it, maybe Harrow was just drawn down, deeper and deeper. Maybe they never escaped Drearburh at all and Harrow’s heart longed for drill shafts and fissures, for deep places, damp with mould and dark with secrets.

“I’ve shown you my maps,” Harrow reasoned. “There’s space here that I can’t account for. There’s something below the facility that’s been sealed off.”

“Like the Tomb,” Gideon repeated, and Harrow nearly snapped back at Gideon before she caught the look on Gideon’s face and realized her necromancer was actually considering the idea. 

“I don’t know,” Harrow conceded. “There are a few doors down there that are bolted shut, but it could also be--we access the facility through the hatch in the floor of the atrium above. There may be a similar hatch that’s been covered up by the floor panels, beneath the piping. It would take time to find it and I’m not suggesting that you divert your time away from the Lyctor trials, but I do think it’s there.”

Later Gideon brought it up to Palamedes. She made sure to state it was something that Harrow was working on, that Harrow was a genius when it came to spatial relationships, and when Palamedes argued against it, diverted back to the subject of the megatheorem, Gideon shook her head and said, “I think you’re both right. Yeah, you’re right that what we’re puzzling together is a big theorem and I think you’re right that the theorem is the key to Lyctorhood, but I think Harrow’s onto something too. It might be something unrelated to the Lyctorhood, something that they don’t want us to know, right? We’re only seeing what we’re allowed to see. There’s something else here, and that something else is somewhere beneath our feet.”

The more they spoke of it, the more Harrow could feel it, something pulling her down, calling to her. She’d felt that before standing outside the Tomb. She’d felt the pull of it, the desire to know what was locked inside. Gideon had never seemed all that interested. She was pious, of course. She did her duty as the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House, but it always seemed to Harrow like Gideon was merely going through the motions, that it was a promotion that increased her status and bettered her life, and she would do what she needed to do to maintain her position. She acted the part well enough for Harrow’s parents, well enough for Aiglamene and the cloisterites. Only Harrow and Crux seemed to see through the charade and recognize the mistake.

Harrow stopped kissing Gideon and pulled back to look down at her necromancer. Gideon felt big and solid beneath her, which was more annoying than Harrow wanted to admit. Long arms and long legs and she didn’t cave in beneath Harrow’s weight, didn’t fight against Harrow when Harrow climbed over her, when Harrow straddled her waist and pressed kisses down onto her mouth. When Harrow held Gideon’s wrists down against the bed, Gideon made horrific little noises against Harrow’s tongue. Now Gideon looked up at her with a paintless mouth so red it matched her hair and her eyes so dark that the yellow was just a thin ring around black pits. 

Gideon swallowed once, then again, and Harrow realized that she was about to say something. Harrow spoke before Gideon could finish finding her words. 

“You know, I always assumed that something in my parents' plan simply backfired. They sacrificed so much to make sure that I was the heir the Ninth needed, but what if all of that thanergy found you instead? What if it all ended up focused on you? Have you ever wondered?”

Gideon’s fingers curled against the sides of Harrow’s hands. Harrow didn’t release her grip on Gideon’s wrists. 

“You mean, like maybe I wasn’t a necromancer until the crèche flu?” Gideon always insisted on calling it that even though they both knew the truth. 

“That’s exactly what I mean. Why else did you survive? How else? You’ve never wondered?”

Gideon licked her lips. Harrow looked at her neck instead. “No. I’m not sure a necromancer can be created after birth.”

There was a faint purple mark on Gideon’s neck where Harrow had sucked at her skin two nights ago. 

“Perhaps you were a necromancer, and my parents enhanced a dormant condition that you already possessed?”

“Maybe,” Gideon said. When Harrow looked up, when Harrow’s eyes met that hideous yellow, Gideon continued: “Or maybe it just didn’t work?”

Harrow hated that possibility. She hated the thought that two hundred children died--two hundred!--and all they created was a damn good cavalier. What was it for? What was the point? How could it ever be considered worth the price of two hundred children? How could Harrow ever repay them?

“If that’s it, if two hundred children died and _nothing_ came of it, then it wasn’t worth it. I have to believe that it achieved something.”

“It still gave us you,” Gideon said. 

Harrow laughed in Gideon’s face, shrill and mean. In truth, the only thing that kept Harrow going was this idea that her parents' actions fell on Gideon instead of her, that they created a necromancer of Gideon instead of Harrow. If that wasn’t why, then--

“Maybe you’re right,” Gideon said, at exactly the right moment. “Maybe you’re right and I wasn’t a necromancer before, or I was a necromancer, but not as awesome as I am now. I think maybe you’re right.”

“No you don’t,” Harrow said, but it helped, somehow, to hear Gideon say it, even if it was a lie.

“I would change it if I could,” Gideon said. “I’d give it to you if I could.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Harrow said, but she believed that Gideon _would_ and that thought tore at her heart and her stomach, tore low in her gut and left her bleeding out on the floor at Gideon’s feet. Just end it already. How much more could she take? She released Gideon’s wrists, and climbed off Gideon. Gideon didn’t move. She stayed exactly where she was, just watched as Harrow moved off the bed and stood. 

“I don’t think I can hate you any more than I do right now,” Harrow said to the wall. 

“It’s okay,” Gideon said from the bed behind Harrow, because of course Gideon knew the truth, that in this moment, Harrow didn’t hate Gideon at all. Harrow only hated herself.

**

Harrow had Gideon pressed up against the door to the Ninth quarters when the invitation arrived. They didn’t hear the footsteps approach. They heard nothing but their own heavy breathing, the small noises Gideon made as Harrow kissed her mouth open. When the envelope was pushed under the door, they broke apart in a rush, stumbled away from the door. Gideon cleared her throat and began to straighten her robes. Harrow found that she was more angry than embarrassed and she yanked the door open without taking even a moment to think, without reaching for her sword or her chain. She was fast enough to just catch the backs of the Fourth as they disappeared around the corner. She slammed the door shut and turned the lock.

“You need to fix your wards,” she said. “They’re so awful that _children_ can get past! I’m embarrassed for you, Griddle. I’m embarrassed for the Ninth.”

Gideon ignored Harrow. She had the envelope open, the letter in her hands and her eyes grew wider as she read. 

“What is it? Has someone won? Hardly surprising.”

“Won? No, I--look.” She passed the paper to Harrow, but she kept the envelope, running her fingers over the paper. Harrow had just started the salutations when Gideon jumped in with her summary: “The Fifth are hosting a dinner party to celebrate their anniversary. We’re invited.”

“Oh,” Harrow said, her eyes passing over the formal invitation and the warmer addendum from Magnus the Fifth. “We aren’t going.”

Gideon stepped forward and plucked the paper from Harrow’s hand. 

“Of course we’re going,” Gideon said, and her tone pushed a rock off a ledge within Harrow and she nearly buckled when it fell and hit her low in her gut. 

Harrow tried to argue against it. It was the perfect opportunity for some ambitious House to take the rest of them out. They could search the facility for Harrow’s door. If they went, the Fifth might poison their food.

Here Gideon interjected with: “Have you _met_ the Fifth, Harrow?” 

“I have, and I maintain it as a possibility.” 

Harrow continued: A sensible House would not waste time at a dinner party. While the more frivolous houses were celebrating, a sensible House would use the time to their advantage. They’d use the time to get ahead. She argued as many different angles as she could come up with--She really didn’t want to celebrate the anniversary of the Fifth--but the biggest reason, the most important reason, she did not dare say aloud. 

The Fifth’s marriage hit too close to home. It was a sickening reminder of what Gideon had proposed, of what they were skirting around every single night, of a danger that lurked behind each heated kiss. The invitation reminded Harrow that doing what she was doing with Gideon was playing with fire, that if Gideon got it into her head that Harrow wanted _any_ of it, she might resubmit her petition to the Reverend Father and Reverend Mother. She might force Harrow to refuse again, and this time Harrow would be forced to really cut Gideon down.

Harrow did not say it. 

In the end it didn’t matter. Gideon’s primary rebuttal was asinine--”I want to try a dessert.”--but nothing Harrow could say would change Gideon’s mind. 

“If you really don’t want to go, I’ll go alone,” Gideon said, with a final shrug of her stupid shoulders. 

Harrow narrowed her eyes, suddenly suspicious that this was the conclusion Gideon was hoping for from the start. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? An entire evening of desserts with Coronabeth Tridentarius and Dulcinea Septimus.”

Gideon’s eyes were too bright and Harrow had to look away.

“You’re cute when you’re jealous,” Gideon said, which just made everything worse.

That was it then. 

Harrow was going to a dinner party.

** 

Harrow seethed in her seat at the end of the long table. She felt trapped, locked in with the wall on one side and Naberius the Third on the other, with no one to look at but Ianthe Tridentarius across from her and Silas Oktakiseron next. She drew her limbs in tight and shifted her chair closer to the wall. 

She was right. The dinner party was a carefully designed torture. Assigned seating! The Fifth were villains, rank and evil, and no amount of jolly laughter, no bright smiles or kind words could hide the rot they hid under their shining veneer. 

Harrow was in hell, separated from her necromancer, forced to consort with the dregs of the Nine Houses while Gideon sat beside Palamedes Sextus and listened to Dulcinea weave elaborate tales with those big eyes batting. Silas Oktakiseron refused to so much as look at Harrow, did not speak a word. He sat with his hands folded and his eyes shut while the room hummed and laughed around him. He was a little freak that crumbled and cried over the presence of a few black robes and some face paint. 

Ianthe Tridentarius was worse. Where Oktakiseron couldn’t bear to look at Harrow, the Third princess couldn’t seem to look away. She considered Harrow with sharp violet eyes that tracked up and down Harrow’s short length, and when she spoke each word was drawled, drawn out, horrible. Harrow responded tersely, one syllable words only, and Ianthe mostly ended up chatting with her cavalier, whose every word seemed to drip with the same grease he slathered in his hair.

Their hosts were the worst of all. They seemed giddy, happy, absolutely in love. Harrow didn’t understand it and she hated to see it on display. She understood that they were married before Magnus the Fifth became Lady Pent’s cavalier, but that didn’t make it any less horrific. It still could have been Harrow. Gideon had all of the excuses in the world. Harrow wasn’t her cavalier at the time either. It would correct the bloodline. There weren’t many options on the Ninth; it just made sense. It wasn’t like Gideon liked her, then the added _well, not that I would mind_. 

Gideon discussed it as an impersonal business arrangement, but all her lies were exposed when she shuddered and crumbled beneath Harrow’s hands, when she confessed the truth in pathetic desperate sounds she gasped against Harrow’s tongue. 

Harrow’s stomach did a strange dizzying flip. She felt nauseous suddenly, and she pushed away the untouched portion of her food, remembering her concerns about poisons. She took a page from Master Oktakiseron (who, based on the way his lips were moving, was praying and also hadn’t eaten much) and closed her eyes to ground herself. She listened as the Fifth cavalier told jokes that had Coronabeth crumpling in laughter while, across from Harrow, her sister made small dismayed sounds in her throat. Gideon was--was she laughing? Harrow couldn’t hear her, but she was certain Gideon must be laughing. Magnus the Fifth told exactly the sort of idiotic jokes Gideon had always loved. Harrow opened her eyes again to check. 

Gideon wasn’t laughing, but she was smiling, crooked and bright. Harrow’s stomach twisted again.

Magnus leaned in toward Abigail, his mouth finding hers in a quick confident kiss. Harrow’s eyes slid back toward her necromancer, terrified to see Gideon’s reaction to the kiss, but desperate to know. To Harrow’s horror, she looked at Gideon just as Gideon’s eyes shifted toward her. They locked on each other from across the room, black to gold. Harrow’s heart kept into her throat and she shoved her chair back until it knocked into the wall behind her.

She cursed under her breath, but it must have been louder than she thought because even Oktakiseron flinched.

“Oh, is this difficult for the Ninth to stomach?” Ianthe asked, watching her closely. She leaned forward, her elbows on the table and her chin propped on the back of her hand.

“It’s a mockery,” Harrow snapped. “A perversion.” Beside her, Naberius the Third snorted. Ianthe’s eyes narrowed as she glanced toward her cavalier, a moment of distraction before she slid back to Harrow.

“What’s the matter, Ninth?” she drawled. “Did your necromancer rebuff your advances?”

Harrow leaned back in her chair, her head tipped back against the wall. The stance exposed the chain at her hip. “Watch your words,” she warned, staring down her nose at Ianthe. “You don’t want to cross the cavalier of the Ninth.”

Ianthe laughed dryly at that. “I can see why you and the Eighth are such great friends.”

Naberius chuckled, affected and haughty.

“I don’t know why you think this is funny. The Ninth bested you three times last week.”

“Oh,” Naberius said, eyebrows raised in a perfectly practiced mask of surprise. “But that wasn’t _real_ , Ninth. I thought you--that was training, a little half-hearted fun.”

Harrow turned away, fumed down at her plate.

She held on by her fingernails until dessert was served. Across the room, Gideon’s face lit up when she took her first bite. She didn’t seem poisoned. She didn’t look sick. Harrow’s stomach still churned, but she _was_ curious about the dessert that forced her attendance, so she carefully scooped some of the confection onto her spoon. It tasted sweet and frivolous, entirely unnecessary, unfilling and insubstantial. Harrow stood without another word to her neighbors, took her plate, and slid past the row of chairs against the wall. She contemplated dumping the confection on Naberius’s carefully coiffed head, but resisted the urge. She was proud of herself for that.

Jeannemary the Fourth stilled beside Gideon when she saw Harrow approach. She watched Harrow with big round eyes and didn’t turn away until Harrow acknowledged her with a nod. Then the Fourth’s head snapped back to her plate, her fingers tight on her knees. Harrow ignored the child and placed a hand on Gideon’s shoulder. Gideon looked up, surprised.

“I’m full,” Harrow said. She offered Gideon the dessert that she’d barely touched.

Gideon’s eyebrows went up. “Really?”

“Just take it,” Harrow said. Harrow moved to return to her seat, but Gideon caught her arm. 

“Hold on,” Gideon said. “I’m almost done.”

Harrow stood there, angry and awkward, while Gideon finished her dessert. Three bites; that was all it took and then Gideon stood abruptly, her chair scraping loud against the floor. Harrow followed half a step behind her necromancer as Gideon crossed the room and hugged Magnus and Abigail--Harrow acknowledged their _hospitality_ with a curt little bow--said her goodbyes, and then nodded toward Harrow to follow her out the door. 

They were the first to leave the dinner party. 

“It wasn’t so bad,” Gideon said as she led them back toward their rooms.

“Not so bad!” Harrow repeated. “Yes, I imagine it wasn’t so bad for you, sitting with your friends and scarfing down your dessert. I imagine you liked it, seeing them defile our sacred bond.”

Gideon was smiling her stupid crooked smile and when she turned back to look at Harrow there was a gleam in her eye. “Our sacred bond?”

“Don’t,” Harrow warned, but Gideon already had, and anger caught in Harrow’s chest, burned through the nausea and that dizzy feeling she’d felt when her eyes locked to Gideon’s across the room. 

Harrow needed something to fight. She needed to scream and swing her chain and hear the satisfying crunch of crumbling bone. She needed to fall on her knees for the Locked Tomb and pray as she had so many times, pray for patience, pray for understanding, pray for forgiveness for all that was sacrificed and all that she’d failed to fulfill. Gideon was full and warm and _happy_ beside her and Harrow felt so fucking empty. There was a cavern inside her, a tomb, and it howled. It threatened to pull Harrow in and swallow her whole if Harrow didn’t _do_ something. 

She wanted to shout at Gideon; push her down. She wanted to knock her adept to the floor and hold her down, claw at her robes and her veil and her skin. She wanted to bite Gideon hard enough to break skin. She wanted to bruise. 

“I need something to fight,” Harrow choked out, desperate to fill herself with something other than Gideon Navegesimus. “Come on.”

Gideon followed, oblivious to the howling within Harrow. Gideon was already sated. Harrow was left desperate and craving. 

She let Harrow lead the way, and Harrow knew exactly where she wanted to go. 

Down to the atrium, to the hatch and the ladder. Down into the facility, to Laboratory Two and Harrow’s old friend. 

**

Harrow screamed as she tore through the construct. Left lateral radius. Right-bottom tibia. Side of mandible. Eighteenth rib. Sternum.

The construct fell and Harrow shouted, “Again.” In IMAGING, Gideon lifted her hand from the panel and the door in RESPONSE slid open. Harrow stalked out of the room and waited for the trial to reset. 

Gideon was blessedly silent during this process. 

Harrow rolled her shoulders, adjusted her grip on her chain, shook out her legs and stepped back inside. The room recognized her entrance; the door shut and the vents began to spew their bone fog. 

Harrow felt the change immediately, just like the last time and the time before that.

Gideon Nav was in her head, in her blood, in her fingers, and when it finished, when the construct was rubble on the floor, Harrow growled: “Again.”

Gideon in her arms and her shoulders. Gideon in her legs. Gideon--

The construct came down and its glowing green eyes faded and went out. It wasn’t enough, not nearly enough. Harrow needed so much more.

“Again!”

This time Gideon ignored her. This time Gideon was there in the door before Harrow had a chance to leave the room. Harrow was still standing at its center, rapier in one hand and chain in the other. Gideon had blood dripping from her nose, pink staining the whites of her eyes, but the rest of her was blazing, turned up and turned on and Harrow threw aside her chain and her sword and rushed Gideon, pushing her up against the wall of Response. 

“Is this what you want?” Harrow asked. 

Gideon swallowed, didn’t respond. 

“This is what you want,” Harrow accused. “You try to get in my head and my hands and my heart.” There was a cut on her palm and blood beaded up from the line of it. She pressed her hand to Gideon’s cheek, a red streak against the sweat-gray paint. “You wanted me for my blood, isn’t that it?”

Gideon shook her head. “I want all of you.”

It was the first time she’d ever admitted it, and Harrow laughed. “All of me? This?”

“Yes,” Gideon said, her eyes darting from Harrow’s eyes to her mouth and back up again. 

“The truth, finally.”

“Is it so wrong?” Gideon asked. “I’m me and you’re _you_ and in Drearburh it was easy to say that it made sense, that you and I were a logical match and if we’re honest, there was no other choice. We’re not in Drearburh anymore, and I still--”

“Stop,” Harrow said. 

Gideon stopped, just like that. 

“I’m your cavalier,” Harrow said. 

“One flesh and one end,” Gideon said, her voice low. On another day it would have been a joke, accompanied by waggling brows. There was no joke in her tone this time. Gideon was dead serious. 

“Don’t say it like that,” Harrow said. “Not like _that._ You’re a nasty little pervert, Griddle. I don’t know why my parents couldn’t see that.”

“You saw the Fifth. It’s not perverted and you’d see that if you’d just--”

“--yes, it _is_.” That was it. Harrow knew it would come to that, to the Fifth tearing everything down. She pushed away from Gideon, paced the room. Her heart was pounding, his stomach flipping. “I think they poisoned my dinner.”

Gideon rolled her unsettling yellow eyes at that. She was slumped against the wall, sagging now that Harrow wasn’t there to hold her up. Harrow picked her rapier up from the floor and turned to point it at Gideon from across the room. “Raise the construct again. I need it again or I’m going to come for you.”

Gideon didn’t move. 

Harrow took a step forward, rapier still raised, and still Gideon did not budge. Gideon’s hands weren’t tight. Her fingers weren’t splayed. She had no chips of bone ready to throw down, hadn’t reached for the plugs in her ears or the bones around her wrist. “The construct, Griddle.”

Gideon shrugged. “Do it. Come for me instead.”

Harrow paused. She remembered how it felt to push Gideon to the ground, to accuse her of being some monster out of time, an invader to the Ninth. It felt shitty. She didn’t want to fight Gideon. She wanted the bones, needed them. “Let’s go then. Where are they?”

Gideon shook her head. “No, no constructs. Just me.”

Harrow threw down her rapier and she rushed Gideon again, her hands in Gideon’s robes, knocking her back toward the wall. She pulled Gideon out of her slouch, pushed her up until she was standing tall before Harrow, held up by Harrow’s hands. “I need the construct, Griddle. I need the fight.”

Gideon attempted to shove her away, and when Harrow refused to let go, when Harrow pulled back only far enough to knock Gideon up against the wall again, Gideon gasped--sharp and sudden--and Harrow recognized the response immediately, felt it shoot through her, lighting up nerves in her limbs before settling in her gut. Harrow tightened her hands, fingers digging into Gideon’s shoulders. Gideon’s feet slipped against the floor and then Gideon’s hands found Harrow. She found Harrow and she pulled her in, yanked her closer instead of pushing her away.

It was too much. Harrow let it go too far, let it go on too long, and she didn’t know how to stop it now. She kissed Gideon, kissed her like she’d kissed her every night since that first night, every night without fail, and Gideon broke apart in Harrow’s hands, shattered beneath Harrow’s lips. 

It felt different now. Gideon felt different now that she’d come out and said it, admitted that she wanted to marry Harrow for Harrow and not for convenience or blood. She wanted Harrow and she kissed Harrow as though she’d been storing up kisses, locking them away, saving them for years and she’d only now decided to spend them, all at once in case she didn’t get another chance. 

She might not get another chance. 

Harrow would stop this, had to stop this, should never have started it in the first place. She hated it and wanted it and hated herself for wanting it, and that just made her want it more. Gideon was Harrow’s destruction, had been since she fell down the shaft. She was Harrow’s undoing, Harrow’s downfall and Harrow’s death. She was Harrow’s flesh and Harrow’s end and Harrow hated it. She _hated_ it, and she couldn’t get enough. 

She pulled at Gideon, forced Gideon down onto her mouth. Gideon’s neck bent forward to reach her lips, and when Gideon’s feet began to slip, Harrow shoved her down until Gideon sank onto the floor, her back against the wall, legs sprawled in front of her. Gideon reached for Harrow, tried to pull her in at the waist. She started to push aside Harrow’s robes, but Harrow knocked Gideon’s hands away. Harrow folded down onto her necromancer. She straddled Gideon’s hips, teeth sharp against Gideon’s mouth. There was no mistaking the sound Gideon made. She fucking _loved_ this.

Harrow could have all of Gideon if she wanted her; she understood that now. Gideon would give herself to Harrow completely, and she would mean it. Harrow had the means to destroy her destroyer. She could be Gideon’s undoing, her downfall and her death.

It didn’t matter. 

Harrow couldn’t do that to the Ninth. She’d sworn an oath, and she was nothing if not good to her word. She was Matthias Nonius come again. She was the greatest cavalier the Ninth had ever produced. She was the blood of the unfilled vow, the bloody teeth of the unkissed skull.

Her teeth were far from unkissed now.

Gideon was beneath her, all over her. One flesh, one end. She would take Gideon’s kisses; she’d swallow them and savor them. 

Harrow the Ninth would never let Gideon Navegesimus fall. 

**

Harrow’s brain was screaming again by the time they left #1-2 TRANSFERENCE/WINNOWING. DATACENTER. She was buzzed with adrenaline and echoes of anger and a terrible twisting need that no kisses could quench. She felt like she’d lost a piece of herself in that room. The world seemed both unfair and strangely consistent. She and Gideon were still sneaking in those final kisses as they stumbled out of the laboratory and into the corridor, but they pulled it together, straightened their robes, and started down the corridors toward the ladder. Gideon was swaggering, just a bit, and that should make Harrow angry. It should set her fuming all over again.

It didn’t, and to Harrow’s horror, she realized that she was swagging, just a bit, too.

They hurried along, Gideon leading, Harrow following half a step behind. 

They were alone down there, motion sensors triggering lights as they walked. As they approached the ladder, Gideon stopped. She froze just long enough for Harrow to walk into her back, and then she was moving, swearing over and over--”shit, shit, shit, shit, no, no, shit.”--as she rushed forward and fell to her knees at the base of the ladder. Only then did Harrow see what had caused her necromancer’s distress. She stood behind Gideon’s right shoulder as Gideon flopped the top corpse to the side, exposing what remained of the faces.

Harrow already knew who it was going to be. She recognized their clothes on sight. 

Abigail Pent and Magnus Quinn.

Gideon looked up at Harrow, her eyes big with fear. “Go Harrow, get the others. Run.”

Harrow stood her ground, shook her head. She drew her sword. “Don’t be an idiot, Griddle. Whatever did that might still be here. I’m not leaving you alone down here.”

“I can’t--”

Harrow grabbed Gideon’s shoulder and hauled her to her feet. “You can. Up the ladder, now. We go together. You can’t help the Fifth. We’re too late for that.”

**

They went right to the Sixth, then found the Third, then the Seventh and Eighth. It wasn’t long before they were all huddled around the bodies at the base of the ladder. Seven necromancers tried to raise them. None of them succeeded and in the end, it was the Eighth who stood up and said, “This isn’t necessary. It’s obvious how this happened.”

The Second cavalier grunted, and Captain Deuteros said, “Enlighten us, Master Oktakiseron.”

“The Eighth accuses the Ninth of murder.”

Palamedes stepped in. “On what grounds?” 

Deuteros said, “The best course of action is to inform the Cohort and bring in military enforcers.”

The Eighth ignored her. 

“My reasons are threefold,” Oktakiseron began, his voice calm. Harrow kept forgetting that he was, ridiculously, only sixteen. How did the Eighth fit so much awful into someone so young? “First, as we are all well aware, the Ninth is a bone adept. The Fifth are visibly shredded, pierced by many small bone fragments from numerous sources. Second, the Ninth conspicuously left dinner before anyone else--”

“--they did seem rather _something_ as they left,” Ianthe agreed. Her eyes were on Harrow as she said it. Harrow held her gaze. 

Harrow knew how she and Gideon must look. Their faces were bloodied, their robes were rumpled, and if Harrow looked anything like her necromancer, then she had no paint whatsoever left around her mouth and her lips were swollen and bitten red. 

Oktakiseron continued: “Third, the Ninth reacted violently to the Fifth’s disregard for the sacred relationship between a necromancer and cavalier. She blatantly and openly hated their union and threatened the Princess of Ida when she urged moderation.”

“I didn’t--” Gideon started, but the Eighth silenced her with a sour look.

“Not you,” Silas clarified. “Your cavalier.”

Gideon looked down toward Harrow. Harrow shrugged. “Didn’t kill anyone though.”

Gideon shook her head, clearly confused by the accusation. “My cavalier is not a necromancer. This much bone--if one of our party is a murderer, it’s obviously not a lone cavalier.”

“No,” the Eighth said. “Then you admit you worked together at this.”

“All right,” Captain Deuteros said. She seemed very young, suddenly, very sad and very tired. “This requires the proper authorities. In the meantime, Ninth, your keys.” She held a hand out toward Harrow. 

Harrow laughed.

“Harrow,” Gideon started, but it was too late. Harrow had been itching for a fight all night. She wouldn’t standby while Gideon handed over their keys. That wasn’t in the cards. Harrow tried to sate herself with bone and with the taste of Griddle’s kisses on her tongue, and none of it was enough. The fight rose up within her again and Harrow began to pull on her gloves. 

“I challenge the Second and the Eighth!” she announced. She drew her rapier from its scabbard. “I name the time. The time is now.”

Captain Deuteros’s arms flopped at her sides in tense exasperation. “That isn’t how it’s done.” She looked to Gideon. “Reverend Daughter--”

Gideon held up a hand to silence the Second. She turned to search her cavalier’s face. Harrow made sure Gideon saw the challenge in her eyes. She willed Gideon not to pull back. Harrow would kiss Gideon so hard she forgot her own damn name if Gideon just sided with her on this one thing. She’d promise Gideon kisses for the rest of their lives if Gideon refused to fold now. 

The Fifth was dead, and this was all a waste of time, but if this was how it had to be played, then so be it. They had no idea what was coming for them, and if Gideon just--

“The Ninth challenges the Second,” Gideon said in the tones of the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House, with all the weight and depth of Drearburh. “The Ninth challenges the Eighth.”


End file.
